One of the most misleading statements during the presidential debates was when Barack Obama claimed that William Ayers was just "a guy in the neighborhood."
But that piece of spin is nothing compared to the false story now being peddled by Mr. Obama's media supporters that Mr. Ayers -- who worked with the Democratic nominee for years to disperse education grants through a group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- has redeemed his terrorist past. In the New York Times, for example, Frank Rich writes that "establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform."
I've studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools.
....as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.
He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America's future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, "On Urban Education," can read these exhortations from the course description: "Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression -- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine."
The readings Mr. Ayers assigns to his university students are as intellectually diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; two books by Mr. Ayers himself; and "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks (lower case), the radical black feminist writer.
Two years ago Mr. Ayers shared with his students a letter he wrote to a young radical friend: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out."
Kate at Small Dead Animals had a perfect example of how these totalitarian idealogues are casually using the leftist environmental agenda to brainwash children in Canada (and, if you have any children in public school in the US, you probably have witnessed this trend over the last decade). This sort of thing is just so incredibly appalling I hardly know what to say. It parallels how the Palestinian gunman hide behind children and use them to throw rocks at the Israelis, knowing full well that decent people are repulsed at the idea of retaliating against innocents (isn't that cute?). And then consider the harm it does to the souls of the children themselves who are being used in such a manner.
We've also recently seen how the mind and souls of children are being systematically manipulated by the left to worship Barack Obama; and how textbooks are already being rewritten to instill love and awe at his magnificence.
Bill Ayers is more than an ideologue; he is an ideological psychopath.
Barack Obama insists that he has denounced Ayer's "despicable acts" from the past-- when he isn't claiming he knew nothing about them; or that he was only 8 years old when they were committed.
Well, what about Ayers' despicable acts in the presnt? What his stated intent to use the American educational system as an indoctrination camp for his leftist ideology?
Obama cannot denounce that because he actively participated in Ayers' plan for American schools and willingly doled out money for the indoctrination of our children into the "social justice" bulls**t of zombie communists like Ayers.
Many people do not seem to care particularly about this intimate educational association between Obama and Ayers, but it is vastly important. Obama says that Ayers won't be in his administration, but Ayers' ideas will be.
Even as Obama tries to distance himself from Ayers and pretend they were not that close, consider this:
Democratic candidate Barack Obama was a member of the socialist New Party during the 1990s, according to new evidence unearthed by web bloggers, receiving the party’s endorsement for his state Senate run in 1996. Reports earlier this summer that Obama was associated with the New Party were vigorously denied by the Obama campaign and the New Party, but researchers examining Internet archives have found New Party documents clearly indicating Obama was a member of the party, received its endorsement, encouraged Party members to work with him in the Illinois statehouse, and signed a contract agreeing to maintain a relationship with the Marxist-led party during his senate term.
It is inconceivable that Obama does not buy into Ayers' educational philosophy.
And what is that philosophy? I mentioned the following in a previous post, but it is so important, I want to resay it here again:
Recently Andy McCarthy reminded us (was anybody listening?) of the sort of educational reform that the Obama-Ayers-Chavez axis promotes:
The real issue is Ayers's revolutionary leftism (at around the time Ayers and Obama began working on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, by the way, Ayers described himself as "a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist”).
Obama is clearly lying when he claims ignorance about Ayers's terrorism, but even if you wanted to pretend otherwise, it is impossible that he was in the dark about Ayers's revolutionary leftism: Ayers has never made a secret of it and can't seem to help himself from mentioning it about every 30 seconds. Obama not only knew about Ayers's views in this regard; he obviously subscribed to them: was a member of the Chicago New Party begun by the Democratic Socialists of America; he worked closely with Ayers on "education reform" for years, he approved of Ayers's similarly fringe-Left views of the criminal justice system's treatment of juvenile crime, and, we are learning; and he was tightly aligned with ACORN, which he and Ayers funded and whose practices fit comfortably with the Ayers view of "participatory democracy").
In any event, here are excerpts of Ayers's 2006 speech before Hugo Chavez and other assembled "comrades":President Hugo Chavez, … invited guests, comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica [sic]! Welcome to the World Education Forum. Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana! ...
[M]y comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice … has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution [i.e., Chavez's movement] and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane…. [For more information on the Venezuelan socialist Luis Bonilla-Montoya, see here.]
I began teaching when I was 20 yeas old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”
I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!
… [I’ve] learned that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space—what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?
Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and materialism—turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together, voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.
… Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failing of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.
… [W]e, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.
Viva Mission Sucre!
Viva Presidente Chavez!
Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana!
Hasta La Victroria Siempre!
Is this what we can expect from an Obama administration for our children? Ayers is not simply a destroyer of schools, he is a destroyer of souls...and Barack Obama has been helping him do it for more than a decade.
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